Advances in semiconductor, processor and related technologies have made possible the availability of computing power to the average users that was once deliverable only by the large main frames. At the same time, advances in telecommunication, networking and related technologies have increased connectivity of computing devices. Further, with the advance of the Internet and the World Wide Web, abundant media contents, including video and songs, are now available to the average users.
Today, users may readily download a variety of media contents from the “Internet”, some illegally, creating a severe financial drain on the media content industries, in particular, the music industry. In response, a number of media content distribution services, such as iTunes and Netflix, and a number of portable music players, such as iPod, have emerged. These services and players provide users with relatively low cost, and somewhat efficient options to purchase and consume media contents legitimately, while providing the media content owners with reasonable protection for their property rights, i.e. against misappropriation.
However, these options still suffer from a number of disadvantages. For example, a song purchased and downloaded onto a portable music player, such as iPod, may only be consumed in the relative low fidelity digital encoding format (MP3) used by the portable music players. Further, when compared to the amount of songs that can be downloaded and stored on a typical laptop or desktop computer, the number of songs that can be downloaded and stored on a portable music player are relatively small. The relative few songs that are downloaded and stored on a portable music player are not readily shareable with others.
Still further, when a song is purchased through an iTunes like service, the purchase comes with only a limited number of copies. Over time, device failures or other reasons may cause the end-user to have to re-download, and eventually lose their legal purchase of the song. In other words, these services do not provide persistence of the purchases.